Conversational Agents for Chronic Pain Management

Chronic pain is a serious public health issue affecting approximately30-40% of the US adult population. The widespread use of opioid
pain medication has contributed to a national epidemic of addiction
in the US; more than 165,000 deaths occurred between 1999 and 2014
due to opioid overdose. As such, there is an urgent need to develop
and deploy non-addictive chronic pain management methods.

Toward this, recent studies have identified Mindfulness-Based Stress
Reduction (MBSR) to be a promisingalternative
for long-term pain management. The efficacy of MBSR depends on regular practice and
thus, longitudinal adherence is essential for effective pain
management. However, ensuring adherence and engagement to MBSR is
a serious challenge and remains as a key barrier in translating it
from clinical settings to real-world practice.

In this proposal, we aim to address this compliance and adherence
issue by using a conversational agent. Specifically, we propose
to leverage the Amazon Alexa ecosystem to develop an interactive,
personalized virtual coach for delivering MBSR. Based on prior
research, we believe that such a virtual coach will engender trust
and social rapport, resulting in sustained high engagement over a
long period of time. Furthermore, our proposed approach is highly
scalable and can improve access to MBSR practices, including for
those in rural communities.